Suchergebnisse

Wenn Russlands Krieg nicht für einen gemeinsamen Sprung nach vorne sorgt, was dann? Fünf Vorschläge für eine Transformation der europäischen Sicherheitszusammenarbeit. (IP)

On 31 December 2020, Germany's rotating EU Council presidency will come to an end after a particularly difficult term. Corona burst upon an already crowded policy agenda, including the negotiation of the EU's next seven-year budget, rule of law conditionality and the finalization of the Brexit negotiations. On top of a packed agenda, the German presidency faced considerable institutional and corona-related constraints. In this Policy Brief, Nicole Koenig and Thu Nguyen look back at the German presidency and develop five key takeaways for the upcoming corona presidencies, notably Portugal (first half of 2021) and Slovenia (second half). The German presidency has shown that they should prepare for more corona crisis management,internal divisions and unexpected crises.

After four days of intense negotiations, EU leaders have finally reached an agreement on the EU´s long-term EU budget and post-Covid recovery fund. The final compromise leaves mixed feelings. It truly constitutes a historically ambitious package which almost doubles EU spending for 2021-2024 with money raised on the financial markets. Internal solidarity and economic recovery are key pre-conditions for wielding power externally and being resilient to external influence. The contrast between the initial lack of intra-European solidarity and China's so-called "mask diplomacy" underlined by targeted disinformation illustrates this point. At the same time, we saw a traditional pattern in the European Council's budgetary negotiations: the compromise has been reached by largely preserving spending pre-allocated to Member States – e.g. agriculture and cohesion spending, the new facility providing support to national recovery and resilience plans - and by drastically cutting key EU programmes financing EU-level public goods and thus delivering added value for all – in areas such as research and innovation, mobility, development aid or internal and external security.

The coronavirus pandemic accelerates some of the global trends that fueled the EU's geopolitical ambition while raising the challenges that come with its enactment. This policy paper reviews the implications for the EU while focusing on three key relationships: China, the US and Africa. It argues that the pandemic represents an opportunity for EU global leadership and shows what that could look like.

Twelve months ago, Ursula von der Leyen announced that her Commission would be a geopolitical one. This promise was a response to the crisis of multilateralism, the growing competition between the US and China, the fallout of Brexit, and the broad range of brewing and frozen conflicts in the EU's neighbourhood. One year later, a geopolitically assertive EU is needed more than ever. The pandemic has underlined the vulnerability of Europe's supply chains and intensified the political rift between the US and China. The further the two superpowers move towards economic decoupling, the clearer it becomes how exposed Europe is to this rivalry. Meanwhile, the crises in the eastern Mediterranean, Mali, and Belarus have reminded Europeans of their geopolitical responsibilities.